Although pundits dubbed 1992 the Year of the Woman and 1996 was the year of the women's agenda, feminist activists still have plenty of work to do before the November 2000 elections. Women still make up little over ten percent of Congress. Feminists elected during the 1992 sweep are considered vulnerable politically because of their outspoken support of women's rights issues. The NOW Political Action Committee (NOW/PAC) is working hard to assure that feminist reinforcements will join the ranks at all levels of government.
NOW's Victory 2000 Campaign aims to elect 2000 feminist by 2000 for every office -- from water control board to the U.S. Senate. The campaign include intensive political training for activists, candidate recruitment drives and election projects in targeted districts around the country. The newest installment in NOW's political training is the Political Institute, part of the 2000 National NOW Conference. The Institute will provide activists with the tools to elect feminist candidates. NOW/PAC expects to place activists who complete the training in targeted campaigns.
Just months into 2000, NOW/PAC helped elect California State Senator Hilda Solis to the U.S. House of Representatives. Solis is the first new feminist woman heading to Congress and was the only candidate in the country to defeat an incumbent on Super Tuesday. California State Senator Sheila Kuehl and Assemblymember Jackie Goldberg also triumphed in the primary race with the help of NOW/PAC.
Other key races include:
The next president will likely fill two or three vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court during his term. With the justices currently divided 5 to 4 on abortion and other women's rights, the new president's nominations will set the direction of the Court for many years to come. With this in mind, NOW launched a public education campaign against George W. Bush, nicknamed the "Bush-Whacker campaign," to unmask his anti-abortion rights, anti-woman rights and anti-lesbian and gay political agenda. NOW Executive Vice President Kim Gandy met with Vice President Al Gore and other women's rights groups to address women's concerns in the 2000 elections and the need for women's issues on the presidential campaign agenda.
To make sure that ultra-conservatives do not win the White House, and therefore the Supreme Court, NOW/PAC will work to turn out energetic, enthusiastic and experienced activists to work for the election of the many feminists running for national, state and local offices, and by doing so turn out an anti-Bush vote as well.
The Victory 2000 campaign is helping prepare for the 2002 elections, when the state legislatures will have re-drawn congressional lines based on the 2000 census, adding many new seats in the Sunbelt. NOW activists and other feminists have already been elected, and new candidates are running for state legislatures, positioning themselves to help create the new districts and make the next big breakthrough for feminist candidates, as we did 1982 and 1992.
NOW has taken the lead organizing role for the U.S. action of the upcoming World March of Women 2000, a coordinated series of actions around the globe calling for an end to poverty and violence against women. Over 4600 organizations more than 150 countries are taking part in the World March of Women. Thousands of women world wide will rally to send an unmistakable message: We will not rest until justice is ours. We will show the nation and the world that supporters of women's rights are the overwhelming majority. While each of the marches will call for an end to violence and poverty, issues of local significance will also be addressed. The U.S. action will mobilize women's rights supporters in this country to get out the women's votes for the 2000 elections. NOW celebrated International Women's Day (March 8) by kicking off organizing efforts for the World March of Women with a news conference on the Capitol grounds and a protest outside the office of Sen. Jesse Helms, demanding passage of CEDAW (the United Nations Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women).
Worldwide events around the World March of Women began on International Women's Day, March 8th and will culminate on October 17, the United Nations International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, when women representing every participating country will meet at the U.N. in New York City to demand improved programs to eradicate poverty and violence against women.
The Mission Statement of the U.S. Organizing Committee for the World March of Women is: "We unite with women around the world to demand that leaders of the United States, the United Nations and its member States, and other institutions of power work to: Eliminate poverty and ensure a fair distribution of the planet's wealth between rich and poor and between men and women; Eliminate violence against women; and ensure equality between women and men."
NOW is co-sponsoring the Women's International Symposium on Health (WISH), which NOW Foundation is organizing. On October 16, 2000 WISH will bring together feminists from around the world to address the serious health issues women face universally. Participants will have the opportunity to network with health care professionals, educate themselves on women's health problems and develop strategies to improve health care.
NOW will also launch our first-ever Virtual March, held in conjunction with the New York final rally at the United Nations World March of Women. The Virtual March will give activists around the globe the opportunity to show their support for women's rights on October 17, 2000.
The Quebec Federation of Women (Fédération des femmes du Québec)
Media activism campaigns have kicked off with a bang and great success in local communities, as well as nationally. NOW's efforts received substantial national media coverage. In February 2000 NOW launched the Watch Out, Listen Up! Campaign to create a more socially responsible and diverse U.S. media and make television more relevant to women's lives and more responsive to women's needs. Teams of Feminist Field Analysts monitored prime-time network programming on ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC during the February Sweeps Month. The feminist analysts rated programs by documenting the amount of violence, stereotypes, sexual exploitation and social responsibility. NOW analyzed the results of the feminist television surveys and issued a report during the May Sweeps period. The release of the Feminist Primetime Report in May was followed by a series of protests outside the headquarters and affiliate stations of the FOX Network, which NOW named a Network of Shame for its bottom-of-the-barrel rank. NBC ranked first, CBS second and ABC came in third. These actions caught the eye of FOX executives, leading to a meeting between NOW President Patricia Ireland and Gail Berman, the incoming president of FOX Entertainment. NOW is proceeding with cautious optimism after meeting with FOX, and looking forward to feminist changes in all the networks' fall line-ups.
NOW unveiled the Feminist Image Campaign at the 1999 National NOW Conference. This broad image campaign depicts the wide diversity of NOW members dedicated to feminist change. The campaign includes 15 print ads and two short commercial spots. NOW is gearing up for their national release. NOW also organized a Media Institute in July 1999, a day-long strategy session and symposium on the media and its impact on women's lives in light of the technological and political changes in this industry. At the Institute, activists began planning the launch of a Feminist Communications Network -- a TV, cable, radio and web broadcast network, to take control of our own image and message.
NOW also takes on right-wing mouthpiece radio talk show hosts. NOW's Flush Rush Campaign continues to educate activists and advertisers nationwide about Rush Limbaugh's misogynistic rhetoric. And this spring we succeeded in our efforts to keep Limbaugh from being hired as a commentator on ABC Monday Night Football. In May 2000, NOW also signed on to a campaign designed to dissuade advertisers from buying time on Dr. Laura Schlessinger's television show, slotted to debut in the fall line-up. Dr. Laura's anti-women, anti-lesbian and gay comments on her radio show prompted protests and a full-page newspaper ad that ran in major daily papers across the U.S., including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
NOW's participation in the World March of Women 2000 will complement other campaigns and tactics aimed at ending violence against women. Because violence and poverty affect women universally, hundreds of thousands of women worldwide will march to demand and end to these epidemics which harm us and take our lives. The U.S. component of the World March of Women will build momentum to elect and re-elect feminist candidates who will support anti-violence measures.
In May, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the decision in Brzonkala v. Morrison. By a narrow 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court ruled that women could not sue their attackers in federal court under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Christy Brzonkala, plaintiff in the case, sued the men she accused of raping her and took her fight for justice all the way to the Supreme Court. NOW demonstrated outside the Court on the day of the oral arguments in the case protested outside the Court, when the decision was announced nationwide to hold similar actions in front of other federal buildings. To honor and recognize Christy Brzonkala's courageous struggle for justice, NOW will present a Woman of Courage Award to her at the 2000 NOW National Conference.
NOW also pressured congress for re-authorization and expansion of VAWA, which will expire this year if Congress does not act. Reauthorization of VAWA would continue -- and in some cases improve -- funding for numerous anti-violence programs, including hotlines, shelters and other support services for survivors of gender-based violence. In March, as part of the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, NOW helped organize a lobby day on Capitol Hill. More 45,000 signatures -- a two-foot-high stack -- proclaiming that women have the right to live free from violence, were presented to Congress.
NOW continues pressing Congress to pass federal hate crimes legislation,
now called the Local
Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, which would improve access to federal
resources to assist local and state law enforcement officials in better
investigating and prosecuting bias-related crimes. It would also extend
coverage to gender, sexual orientation and disability, and eliminate the
requirement that the victim be engaged in a federally protected activity
such as voting. In the wake of the shocking wilding attacks
in New York City's Central Park, NOW called on Congress to pass both
VAWA and the Local Law
Enforcement Enhancement Act to address hate crimes and other violence
against women.
In late 1999, NOW opposed a parental notification bill brought to the New Jersey Legislature. NOW activists rallied on the steps of the New Jersey Capitol the day the Senate Judiciary Committee met to vote on the measure. Still, the committee voted to send the bill to the Senate floor where it easily passed. Republican Governor Christine Todd Whitman signed the bill, making New Jersey the 42nd state to put young women at risk by mandating parental involvement in their decision on abortion.
NOW released a new membership brochure, "Together We Can Win Reproductive Freedom" at the beginning of 2000, just in time for Roe v. Wade celebrations. NOW continues to stand up for women's rights in the courts, at the polls and at the clinics, furthering our legislative work against anti-abortion rights legislation like parental notification laws and the so-called Unborn Victims of Violence Act. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act was an anti-abortion bill aiming to establish legal personhood and legal rights for a fetus. NOW/PAC recruits and elects feminist candidates who fight for reproductive freedom.
NOW made legal history in 1998 winning a unanimous jury verdict in the precedent-setting case NOW v. Scheidler, which held anti-abortion extremists liable for three times the amount of damages they have caused under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO). This decision aligned anti-abortion organizations like Operation Rescue and all its minions with the original group RICO intended to prosecute - the mob. In the summer of 1999, a U.S. District Judge in Chicago issued the first-ever nationwide injunction against such anti-abortion terrorists.
In August 1999, NOW named Detroit Edison a Merchant of Shame, based on the accusations of rampant harassment and discrimination against women and people of color. After months of investigation and discussions with Detroit Edison workers and company leaders, NOW unveiled new strategies in the campaign to stop sexual and racial harassment and sex, race and age discrimination at the Michigan power plant. Detroit Edison, the third corporation NOW has named a Merchant of Shame, is a Fortune 500 company and the seventh largest utility company in the nation. NOW chapters in the Detroit area have stood in support of the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the company, picketed and brought resolutions to the company's annual shareholders meeting and took part, along with Ireland, in a day long forum on employee rights for Detroit Edison workers.
Ireland joined NOW activists from the St. Clare and St. Louis chapters in protesting Miracle Supply Company in St. Louis after NOW member Betty Hoffstedder and other workers alleged numerous counts of sexual harassment, including a hidden video camera in the women's bathroom.
Ireland also visited the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL to celebrate the launch of the Columbia space shuttle with NASA Astronaut Eileen M. Collins (Lieutenant Colonel, USAF) at the helm as the first woman shuttle commander. Ireland congratulated Collins' break through the earth's atmosphere as well as her break through the glass ceiling at NASA.
NOW hit the road again with the Lilith Fair music tour in Summer 1999 to reach out to more feminists nationwide around Love Your Body Day. Tens of thousands of concert-goers responded enthusiastically to the campaign signed the Love Your Body petition, saying "ENOUGH!" to images of women that do not represent all our diversities and to the advertising, tobacco, fashion, cosmetic, and diet industries that profit from creating a standard of beauty that is nearly impossible to obtain.
The Love Your Body campaign is just one component of the Women's Health Project. Because the number of women who will develop breast cancer has increased dramatically, from 1 in 50 in 1998 to 1 in 5 today, NOW united with breast cancer prevention and awareness groups to call on Congress to increase funding for research on causes and preventions of this indiscriminate killer. NOW is in coalition with members of Congress and over 70 organizations demanding funding for more research into the role of environmental risk factors in causing breast cancer. A joint news conference called on candidates and voters to make women's health and prevention of breast cancer priority issues for the 2000 elections.
The success of NOW's Lesbian Rights Summit in 1998 continues to resonate throughout NOW's work for equality. This feminist strategy session for lesbian and allies helped define NOW's work for lesbian rights for the new century. With a large population of young women among the 800 participants, feminists of all generations and backgrounds were able to work together toward a common agenda.
In recent years, NOW has advocated for Alexis Herman as Secretary of Labor and Bill Lann Lee to head the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice, spoken out about racial as well as sexual harassment at Mitsubishi, condemned the rash of church burnings in the South and worked to re-elect African American feminists in Congress who were threatened by re-districting.
NOW has repeatedly stood with civil rights allies in opposing hate crimes, apartheid, sweatshops and gangsta rap. NOW's longstanding commitment to racial justice involves not only working on issues of concern to all women, but also taking affirmative action to include all women in NOW, particularly in leadership. Persons of racial and ethnic diversity make up approximately one-third of NOW's National Board of Directors and half of the NOW/PAC. NOW staff members regularly work on racism and diversity issues with the organization's 550 local chapters and 51 state coordinators.
The NOW Foundation's Love Your Body Campaign and Redefining Liberation video educate young women around body image and encourage activism to challenge the negative and harmful images of them in the media and in advertising. A poster contest for the 1999 Love Your Body Day drew inspired, empowered and creative entries from across from young feminists of all ages across the country. Additionally, NOW mobilized students on college campuses in Maine and California to get out the vote in key races. NOW organizers launched voter registration drives and education campaigns at the University of Maine for a successful defeat of an abortion procedures ban initiative on the state's ballot. Students also made the difference in California's primaries election, in which three strong feminists and NOW/PAC endorsed candidates won their races, with the help of NOW's organizing efforts.
New NOW chapters and Young Feminist Task Forces continue to spring up nationwide. And student interns at the National NOW Action Center come from every state as well as from as far away as Ecuador, Trinidad and Japan.
NOW's Women-Friendly Workplace Campaign continues to send a message that affirmative action is good business and good for business. NOW activists in Florida actively opposed and mobilized against One Florida, their state's plan to wipe out affirmative action. Ireland spoke at Florida NOW's state conference in January about affirmative action and its importance in working women's lives. In 1998, NOW helped defeat the Riggs Amendment to the Higher Education Act, which would have effectively prohibited universities from using affirmative action admissions programs to redress gender and race discrimination. In the same year NOW's lobbying was crucial in retaining the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program, a plan that reserves 10% of federal contracts for businesses owned by women and minorities.
When conservative members of Congress introduced the Fathers Count Act, NOW spoke out loudly against this so-called fathers' rights legislation. The Fathers Count Act, a deceptively named bill that claimed to help poor men become better fathers, would divert funding and sometimes child support for custodial parents (most of whom are women) to programs for non-custodial dads. The bill also required that programs receiving these funds also work to promote marriage. NOW spoke out against the idea that marriage is a one-size fits all solution to poverty and the insulting implication that women should marry their way out of poverty.
NOW also spoke out against privatization of Social Security and Child Support. Most of the proposals offered for privatizing Social Security would create private accounts by diverting Social Security taxes while cutting benefits and raising the retirement age to make up for lost revenues. NOW is wary of privatization and other proposed remedies to "fix" Social Security because women are a majority of all Social Security recipients, and roughly three out of four of the recipients over 85 are women. Older women are twice as likely to depend on Social Security as their sole support. And senior women are twice as likely as men to live in poverty.
Proposals to privatize child support would also take money away from where it is need and place in the pockets of corporations. Under a system of privatized child support, as outlined in the Child Support Distribution Act of 2000, H.R.4469, families will get less money and unregulated private collection companies keep 30 to 40% of the funds secured from parents owing support payments.
NOW criticized the Bankruptcy Reform Act as a plan that would empower wealthy creditors limit consumer rights under federal bankruptcy law. In once instance, as a condition for receiving credit, consumers would sign away their pensions upon declaring bankruptcy. Statistics show that women are the fastest growing segment of the public declaring bankruptcy, often after divorce or financial reversals such as job loss or serious illness. For many women, child support payments are the only thing keeping their families out of poverty - and this bill will make it even more difficult to collect. NOW is particularly concerned that some senators are attempting to water down the impact of the Clinic Violence Amendment. That amendment is targeted at violent anti-abortion activists who would use a loophole in current law to hide assets and use bankruptcy in order to avoid paying legal fines, damages and related court fees.
Ireland and NOW Membership Vice President Karen Johnson protested poverty and homelessness during the March of the Americas, a four hundred mile march from Washington, D.C. to New York City. Ireland and Johnson marched several days during this action.
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